Triumph Adds Bankers, Expands Into Nashville

By Andy Meek

As its annual meeting approaches, Triumph Bank finds itself in a protracted growth spurt, with activity encompassing everything from a pickup in mortgage activity to the addition of new bankers and an expansion into Nashville.

Will Chase

The opening of a loan production office in Brentwood by the 12-year-old bank is Triumph’s first venture outside of its Memphis-area footprint. To start, that office will offer private banking services but the bank plans “in the near future” to open a full-service banking office in the state’s capital, which Triumph CEO Will Chase described as a particularly hot growth market.

“We have wanted to move into Nashville for the past few years,” Chase said. “We wanted to find the right partners who would match our community-based culture and focus on providing an extraordinary client experience.”

Triumph’s Nashville team includes Bill Menkel, previously with Metropolitan Bank, and who brings a 35-year banking career to Triumph. Joining him are senior vice president Rachael Meurrier, vice president Sam Roberts, portfolio manager Hannah McGraw and private banking associate Mary Blair Johnson.

Menkel, who’s been living in Nashville since 2009, said seeing the city’s growth first-hand helps underscore the “totally logical and prudent” decision for Triumph to set up shop there.

“As I go back many years with the management team and Triumph board of directors, there is a high degree of trust and confidence in our eventual success in Nashville,” Menkel said. “It’s going to be great fun.”

The expansion to Nashville, meanwhile, comes off another growth year for the bank, which saw purchase mortgage volume at its mortgage division Triumph Mortgage climb 6 percent in 2017 over 2016, according to figures from real estate information company Chandler Reports, www.chandlerreports.com. That amounted to an increase from $50.3 million to $53.3 million.

Over that same period, Triumph’s assets continued to climb. Numbers from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis show Triumph at the end of 2017 with a little more than $722 million in total assets.

That’s up from a little more than $595 million at the end of 2016.

In other news, Triumph in the fourth quarter also added a team of medical and professional services bankers.

The bank launched that division in November, Chase said, as a way of providing specialized loan and deposit products to professionals primarily in the medical industry. It’s a four-person division headed by Holly Bronson, who has 20-plus years’ experience in banking.

Triumph’s annual meeting will be held April 26 at 5904 Ridgeway Center Parkway in the bank’s commercial and mortgage lending center. That’s the space Triumph opened more than a year ago as a central hub for its business banking activity in the East Memphis business corridor.

Along with an open office layout, guests are greeted inside by design touches like a large, bright Triumph sign and video screen. It’s one example among many that bank officials say is a result of constantly examining how it does business and capitalizing on opportunities it finds to grow and position itself for the future.